THREE LOCAL ENTREPRENEURS SHARE THEIR STORIES

When Chuck Jones and his fiancée, Vicki Kayton, started Chuck Jones Motorsports in 2004, they were "really green" at running their own business after years of working for others in automotive and office settings. Their shop does both specialty and general automotive restoration and repair. They started out in Vancouver but moved to Woodland after about a year to slice overhead costs roughly in half, Kayton said.

They turned to Janet Harte, certified business adviser with Washington State University's Small Business Development Center for help.

Specifically, they needed Harte's counsel in reaching customers and financing a business they started without capital. On the marketing side, Harte helped them target their promotional efforts to reach both car aficionados throughout the region and everyday drivers in their community. On the financial side, the couple secured a small-business loan to buy necessary shop equipment.

10 Tips for Maintaining a Successful Business • Listen to your customers and take action • Have a realistic vision • Focus on what your business does best • Be an expert in your role • Hire the right employees and invest in them • Provide value in everything you do • Continuously improve your business • Stay connected to your industry • Pay yourself • Have fun SOURCE: Janet Harte, WSU Small Business Development Center, Vancouver

Harte also sent them away from counseling sessions with homework assignments that, for instance, had them compare their own business practices to established automotive shops to evaluate what might be effective. It seems to be working, Kayton said. "We're in the process of being profitable."

On the fast track
Last year when Nikki Fox started Driving 101, a Vancouver driving school, she found herself spinning her wheels. At first, Fox did all the behind-the-wheel training while trying to rev up her business, which prepares teenagers and other new drivers to earn their state licenses.

"I couldn't do any marketing. I was doing drives 10 hours a day," said Fox, who now has another instructor hit the roadways while she focuses on business development and classroom instruction. "That almost sank my ship the first six months." To
help her steer Driving 101 in the right direction, she also turned to Harte.

"I expect to expand. That's where Janet comes in," Fox said. "She's my guardian angel." Harte helped Fox fine-tune her business plan, create an operating manual, smooth hiring and other personnel problems, locate resources and generally focus on keys to the success of her business.

Generally, small business owners will come to Harte's Vancouver office with a specific concern, but she takes a "holistic" approach and evaluates an entire business operation. Often, she said, the obvious complaints are symptoms of larger underlying problems that threaten a business. Those problems fall broadly into the areas of management, marketing, finance and production. "We have to be a one-stop shop when it comes to business development," Harte said. "What we do is help them put some control back into their business."

Washington State University Small Business Development Center • Service: Business counseling by appointment • Contact: Janet "Jan" A. Harte, certified business advisor • Telephone: 360-260-6372 • Address: 12000 NE 95th St., Suite 504, Vancouver, Wash., 98682 • E-mail: harte@vancouver.wsu.edu • Web site: www.columbian.com/Business/SBDC • In 2006, the Small Business Center's Vancouver office advised the owners of 103 businesses, creating or saving 85 jobs and building nearly $1.8 million in business capital • The Vancouver office serves Clark, Cowlitz, Skamania and Wahkiakum counties. •  Gov. Christine Gregoire has requested an additional $707,000 in funding to enable the SBDC to open three new centers including one in Longview as well as create MBA internships.

Last year, the business development center's Vancouver office advised 103 businesses, creating or saving 85 jobs and building nearly $1.8 million in business capital, Harte reported. Her office serves Clark, Cowlitz, Skamania and Wahkiakum counties.

Her counseling services are free to qualifying small businesses. Much of the funding originates with the U.S. Small Business Administration. Gov. Christine Gregoire has included a request to ramp up state funding for the program by $707,000, which would enable the SBDC to open three new centers – including one in Longview that would split Harte's territory – and create MBA internships. The SBDC gets additional support from host organizations, including campuses and economic development councils, and contributions from companies such as Microsoft and Intuit, makers of business software.

Teaming with Clark College
While WSU hosts the SBDC's counseling services in Clark County, Clark College offers business training programs for the area. SBDC also teams with other resources, ranging from college business students to the Service Corps Of Retired Executives (SCORE). About a third of Harte's clients are in the process of starting a business. The rest are already open but need a boost to be more successful. Most of them have been in business fewer than five years. "Those are the really critical years," Harte said.

Occasionally, Harte's clients are established businesspeople who need some help finding their way down a new path. Such was the case when notary public Sandra St. Claire turned inventor. She has owned other businesses and has run the mobile NotaryOnCall out of her Vancouver home long enough to know the drill. But when she had an idea for a shield that fits the most common styles of notary journals and protects the stored data from prying – and perhaps criminal – eyes, she needed some help getting it off the ground.

Although a self-described "compulsory sole operator," St. Claire took Harte's advice to enlist both a business consultant and a patent attorney from Vancouver. "She helped me form a team that I need to move this product forward." They helped with licensing, registering and patenting her product, the Notary Privacy Guard.

When she debuted the guard at the National Notary Association annual meeting last June, she sold out all 400 units she brought. Her next challenge is to reach more of the roughly 4 million notaries public in the United States, as well as other professionals who need to conceal confidential data. St. Claire promotes her product as "THE solution" to a specific problem in her industry. In the small business community of Southwest Washington, many entrepreneurs who have faced the daunting task of transforming promising ideas into profitable businesses use similar language for Harte and the SBDC.

"The bulk of the economy is built on the back of small businesses," Harte said. "Our whole mission is to get businesses to thrive and grow. Every time I see a closed door on a business, it's heart-breaking. If we can get to them while they're alive and kicking, that's important."

CHUCK JONES MOTORSPORTS • Owners: Chuck Jones and Vicki Kayton • Product/Service: Restoration and enhancement of classic and high-performance automobiles, such as for show or racing, and general automotive repair and maintenance. Hourly shop rate is $84.95; some large jobs bid as a whole. • Location: 1550 Downriver Drive, Suite B, Woodland. • Web site: www.chuckjonesmotorsports.com • Founded: August 2004 • Additional employees: Expecting to hire one or more full-time technicians in 2007. • Experience: Jones, who handles the automotive side of the business, took two years of automotive training at Clark College and has more than 15 years of experience working on racing cars, restoration and general automotive. Kayton manages business affairs after office jobs with the American Red Cross and other organizations. • 2006 Sales: Approximately $140,000, enough to roughly break even. • Outlook: Chuck Jones Motorsports projects a rise in both specialized and general automotive, which is driving the need to hire employees and add space. • Quote: (Kayton, describing their initial business strategy) "We just grabbed each other’s hands and ran toward the cliff and jumped."

DRIVING 101 • Owner: Nikki Fox • Product/Service: Driving instruction for teenagers and other new drivers. A typical 30-hour course is $295. • Location: 11701 NE 95th St., Suite D, Vancouver • Telephone: 360-892-6988 • Web site: www.drvn101.com • Founded: 2006 • Additional employees: Two full-time, plus a part-time bookkeeper • Experience: Fox has a two-year business management degree from Portland Community College. She learned the business through a job she landed with a driving school she was looking at for her younger sister. She later was a partner in another driving school before going it alone. • 2006 Sales: $73,000 (partial year), resulting in $32,000 loss (includes about $40,000 in startup money). • Outlook: Driving 101 began breaking even last year but encountered losses during the typically slow holiday period. Fox expects to be profitable and, after about three years, start expanding throughout Washington. • Quote: "I was trying to do all the work myself. It’s a self-employed mindset that will keep you as a small business. You’ll never grow because you are doing too many jobs at the same time."

NOTARYONCALL AND NOTARY PRIVACY GUARD • Owner: Sandra St. Claire • Product/Service: NotaryOnCall is a mobile notary service allowing clients to sign documents related to home refinancing, credit lines and some closings at their own home or business and on their schedule; average fee is $125. Notary Privacy Guard is a new product St. Clair invented to protect private information that notaries public record in their journals. The guards come in five styles starting at $9.95 per set online. • Web site: www.notaryprivacyguard.com • Founded: NotaryOnCall in 2000; Notary Privacy Guard debuted in 2006 • Telephone: 360-903-0671 • Additional employees: None • Experience: St. Clair became a notary public while owner of two Mail Boxes Etc. stores. Companies began calling her for real estate signings and then asked her to go to the clients, leading St. Clair to form NotaryOnCall. She developed the Notary Privacy Guard after realizing that notary journals are a potential source of information that could be used for identity theft. • 2006 Sales: Undisclosed • Outlook: For NotaryOnCall, St. James is exploring the option of forming her own signing company and specializing in specific loan types. For Notary Privacy Guard, she hopes to ramp up and already has "co-branded" the guard with the Pennsylvania Association of Notaries, which also sells it. She is working to get the guard into retail stores. • Quote: "To develop a product from scratch, you get to learn about a lot of different industries. I had to really delve deep to make this happen."